I also want to acknowledge Senator, Democratic Leader Harry Reid. Harry, it’s good to see you back on your feet.

I guess it’s true what they say; you can’t keep a good man down.

My friends, I’m deeply humbled by the opportunity to speak for a third time before the most important legislative body in the world, the U.S. Congress.

I want to thank you all for being here today. I know that my speech has been the subject of much controversy. I deeply regret that some perceive my being here as political. That was never my intention.

I want to thank you, Democrats and Republicans, for your common support for Israel, year after year, decade after decade.

I know that no matter on which side of the aisle you sit, you stand with Israel.

The remarkable alliance between Israel and the United States has always been above politics. It must always remain above politics.

Because America and Israel, we share a common destiny, the destiny of promised lands that cherish freedom and offer hope. Israel is grateful for the support of American — of America’s people and of America’s presidents, from Harry Truman to Barack Obama.

We appreciate all that President Obama has done for Israel.

Now, some of that is widely known.

Some of that is widely known, like strengthening security cooperation and intelligence sharing, opposing anti-Israel resolutions at the U.N.

Some of what the president has done for Israel is less well- known.

I called him in 2010 when we had the Carmel forest fire, and he immediately agreed to respond to my request for urgent aid.

In 2011, we had our embassy in Cairo under siege, and again, he provided vital assistance at the crucial moment.

Or his support for more missile interceptors during our operation last summer when we took on Hamas terrorists.

In each of those moments, I called the president, and he was there.

And some of what the president has done for Israel might never be known, because it touches on some of the most sensitive and strategic issues that arise between an American president and an Israeli prime minister.

But I know it, and I will always be grateful to President Obama for that support.

And Israel is grateful to you, the American Congress, for your support, for supporting us in so many ways, especially in generous military assistance and missile defense, including Iron Dome.

Last summer, millions of Israelis were protected from thousands of Hamas rockets because this capital dome helped build our Iron Dome.

Thank you, America. Thank you for everything you’ve done for Israel.

My friends, I’ve come here today because, as prime minister of Israel, I feel a profound obligation to speak to you about an issue that could well threaten the survival of my country and the future of my people: Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons.

We’re an ancient people. In our nearly 4,000 years of history, many have tried repeatedly to destroy the Jewish people. Tomorrow night, on the Jewish holiday of Purim, we’ll read the Book of Esther. We’ll read of a powerful Persian viceroy named Haman, who plotted to destroy the Jewish people some 2,500 years ago. But a courageous Jewish woman, Queen Esther, exposed the plot and gave for the Jewish people the right to defend themselves against their enemies.

The plot was foiled. Our people were saved.

Today the Jewish people face another attempt by yet another Persian potentate to destroy us. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei spews the oldest hatred, the oldest hatred of anti-Semitism with the newest technology. He tweets that Israel must be annihilated — he tweets. You know, in Iran, there isn’t exactly free Internet. But he tweets in English that Israel must be destroyed.

For those who believe that Iran threatens the Jewish state, but not the Jewish people, listen to Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, Iran’s chief terrorist proxy. He said: If all the Jews gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of chasing them down around the world.

But Iran’s regime is not merely a Jewish problem, any more than the Nazi regime was merely a Jewish problem. The 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis were but a fraction of the 60 million people killed in World War II. So, too, Iran’s regime poses a grave threat, not only to Israel, but also the peace of the entire world. To understand just how dangerous Iran would be with nuclear weapons, we must fully understand the nature of the regime.

The people of Iran are very talented people. They’re heirs to one of the world’s great civilizations. But in 1979, they were hijacked by religious zealots — religious zealots who imposed on them immediately a dark and brutal dictatorship.

That year, the zealots drafted a constitution, a new one for Iran. It directed the revolutionary guards not only to protect Iran’s borders, but also to fulfill the ideological mission of jihad. The regime’s founder, Ayatollah Khomeini, exhorted his followers to “export the revolution throughout the world.”

I’m standing here in Washington, D.C. and the difference is so stark. America’s founding document promises life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Iran’s founding document pledges death, tyranny, and the pursuit of jihad. And as states are collapsing across the Middle East, Iran is charging into the void to do just that.

Iran’s goons in Gaza, its lackeys in Lebanon, its revolutionary guards on the Golan Heights are clutching Israel with three tentacles of terror. Backed by Iran, Assad is slaughtering Syrians. Back by Iran, Shiite militias are rampaging through Iraq. Back by Iran, Houthis are seizing control of Yemen, threatening the strategic straits at the mouth of the Red Sea. Along with the Straits of Hormuz, that would give Iran a second choke-point on the world’s oil supply.

Just last week, near Hormuz, Iran carried out a military exercise blowing up a mock U.S. aircraft carrier. That’s just last week, while they’re having nuclear talks with the United States. But unfortunately, for the last 36 years, Iran’s attacks against the United States have been anything but mock. And the targets have been all too real.

Iran took dozens of Americans hostage in Tehran, murdered hundreds of American soldiers, Marines, in Beirut, and was responsible for killing and maiming thousands of American service men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Beyond the Middle East, Iran attacks America and its allies through its global terror network. It blew up the Jewish community center and the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires. It helped Al Qaida bomb U.S. embassies in Africa. It even attempted to assassinate the Saudi ambassador, right here in Washington, D.C.

In the Middle East, Iran now dominates four Arab capitals, Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut and Sanaa. And if Iran’s aggression is left unchecked, more will surely follow.

So, at a time when many hope that Iran will join the community of nations, Iran is busy gobbling up the nations.

We must all stand together to stop Iran’s march of conquest, subjugation and terror.

Now, two years ago, we were told to give President Rouhani and Foreign Minister Zarif a chance to bring change and moderation to Iran. Some change! Some moderation!

Rouhani’s government hangs gays, persecutes Christians, jails journalists and executes even more prisoners than before.

Last year, the same Zarif who charms Western diplomats laid a wreath at the grave of Imad Mughniyeh. Imad Mughniyeh is the terrorist mastermind who spilled more American blood than any other terrorist besides Osama bin Laden. I’d like to see someone ask him a question about that.

Iran’s regime is as radical as ever, its cries of “Death to America,” that same America that it calls the “Great Satan,” as loud as ever.

Now, this shouldn’t be surprising, because the ideology of Iran’s revolutionary regime is deeply rooted in militant Islam, and that’s why this regime will always be an enemy of America.

Don’t be fooled. The battle between Iran and ISIS doesn’t turn Iran into a friend of America.

Iran and ISIS are competing for the crown of militant Islam. One calls itself the Islamic Republic. The other calls itself the Islamic State. Both want to impose a militant Islamic empire first on the region and then on the entire world. They just disagree among themselves who will be the ruler of that empire.

In this deadly game of thrones, there’s no place for America or for Israel, no peace for Christians, Jews or Muslims who don’t share the Islamist medieval creed, no rights for women, no freedom for anyone.

So when it comes to Iran and ISIS, the enemy of your enemy is your enemy.

The difference is that ISIS is armed with butcher knives, captured weapons and YouTube, whereas Iran could soon be armed with intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear bombs. We must always remember — I’ll say it one more time — the greatest dangers facing our world is the marriage of militant Islam with nuclear weapons. To defeat ISIS and let Iran get nuclear weapons would be to win the battle, but lose the war. We can’t let that happen.

But that, my friends, is exactly what could happen, if the deal now being negotiated is accepted by Iran. That deal will not prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. It would all but guarantee that Iran gets those weapons, lots of them.

Let me explain why. While the final deal has not yet been signed, certain elements of any potential deal are now a matter of public record. You don’t need intelligence agencies and secret information to know this. You can Google it.

Absent a dramatic change, we know for sure that any deal with Iran will include two major concessions to Iran.

The first major concession would leave Iran with a vast nuclear infrastructure, providing it with a short break-out time to the bomb. Break-out time is the time it takes to amass enough weapons-grade uranium or plutonium for a nuclear bomb.

According to the deal, not a single nuclear facility would be demolished. Thousands of centrifuges used to enrich uranium would be left spinning. Thousands more would be temporarily disconnected, but not destroyed.

Because Iran’s nuclear program would be left largely intact, Iran’s break-out time would be very short — about a year by U.S. assessment, even shorter by Israel’s.

And if — if Iran’s work on advanced centrifuges, faster and faster centrifuges, is not stopped, that break-out time could still be shorter, a lot shorter.

True, certain restrictions would be imposed on Iran’s nuclear program and Iran’s adherence to those restrictions would be supervised by international inspectors. But here’s the problem. You see, inspectors document violations; they don’t stop them.

Inspectors knew when North Korea broke to the bomb, but that didn’t stop anything. North Korea turned off the cameras, kicked out the inspectors. Within a few years, it got the bomb.

Now, we’re warned that within five years North Korea could have an arsenal of 100 nuclear bombs.

Like North Korea, Iran, too, has defied international inspectors. It’s done that on at least three separate occasions — 2005, 2006, 2010. Like North Korea, Iran broke the locks, shut off the cameras.

Now, I know this is not gonna come a shock — as a shock to any of you, but Iran not only defies inspectors, it also plays a pretty good game of hide-and-cheat with them.

The U.N.’s nuclear watchdog agency, the IAEA, said again yesterday that Iran still refuses to come clean about its military nuclear program. Iran was also caught — caught twice, not once, twice — operating secret nuclear facilities in Natanz and Qom, facilities that inspectors didn’t even know existed.

Right now, Iran could be hiding nuclear facilities that we don’t know about, the U.S. and Israel. As the former head of inspections for the IAEA said in 2013, he said, “If there’s no undeclared installation today in Iran, it will be the first time in 20 years that it doesn’t have one.” Iran has proven time and again that it cannot be trusted. And that’s why the first major concession is a source of great concern. It leaves Iran with a vast nuclear infrastructure and relies on inspectors to prevent a breakout. That concession creates a real danger that Iran could get to the bomb by violating the deal.

But the second major concession creates an even greater danger that Iran could get to the bomb by keeping the deal. Because virtually all the restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program will automatically expire in about a decade.

Now, a decade may seem like a long time in political life, but it’s the blink of an eye in the life of a nation. It’s a blink of an eye in the life of our children. We all have a responsibility to consider what will happen when Iran’s nuclear capabilities are virtually unrestricted and all the sanctions will have been lifted. Iran would then be free to build a huge nuclear capacity that could product many, many nuclear bombs.

Iran’s Supreme Leader says that openly. He says, Iran plans to have 190,000 centrifuges, not 6,000 or even the 19,000 that Iran has today, but 10 times that amount — 190,000 centrifuges enriching uranium. With this massive capacity, Iran could make the fuel for an entire nuclear arsenal and this in a matter of weeks, once it makes that decision.

My long-time friend, John Kerry, Secretary of State, confirmed last week that Iran could legitimately possess that massive centrifuge capacity when the deal expires.

Now I want you to think about that. The foremost sponsor of global terrorism could be weeks away from having enough enriched uranium for an entire arsenal of nuclear weapons and this with full international legitimacy.

And by the way, if Iran’s Intercontinental Ballistic Missile program is not part of the deal, and so far, Iran refuses to even put it on the negotiating table. Well, Iran could have the means to deliver that nuclear arsenal to the far-reach corners of the earth, including to every part of the United States.

So you see, my friends, this deal has two major concessions: one, leaving Iran with a vast nuclear program and two, lifting the restrictions on that program in about a decade. That’s why this deal is so bad. It doesn’t block Iran’s path to the bomb; it paves Iran’s path to the bomb.

So why would anyone make this deal? Because they hope that Iran will change for the better in the coming years, or they believe that the alternative to this deal is worse?

Well, I disagree. I don’t believe that Iran’s radical regime will change for the better after this deal. This regime has been in power for 36 years, and its voracious appetite for aggression grows with each passing year. This deal would wet appetite — would only wet Iran’s appetite for more.

Would Iran be less aggressive when sanctions are removed and its economy is stronger? If Iran is gobbling up four countries right now while it’s under sanctions, how many more countries will Iran devour when sanctions are lifted? Would Iran fund less terrorism when it has mountains of cash with which to fund more terrorism?

Why should Iran’s radical regime change for the better when it can enjoy the best of both world’s: aggression abroad, prosperity at home?

This is a question that everyone asks in our region. Israel’s neighbors — Iran’s neighbors know that Iran will become even more aggressive and sponsor even more terrorism when its economy is unshackled and it’s been given a clear path to the bomb.

And many of these neighbors say they’ll respond by racing to get nuclear weapons of their own. So this deal won’t change Iran for the better; it will only change the Middle East for the worse. A deal that’s supposed to prevent nuclear proliferation would instead spark a nuclear arms race in the most dangerous part of the planet.

This deal won’t be a farewell to arms. It would be a farewell to arms control. And the Middle East would soon be crisscrossed by nuclear tripwires. A region where small skirmishes can trigger big wars would turn into a nuclear tinderbox.

If anyone thinks — if anyone thinks this deal kicks the can down the road, think again. When we get down that road, we’ll face a much more dangerous Iran, a Middle East littered with nuclear bombs and a countdown to a potential nuclear nightmare.

Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve come here today to tell you we don’t have to bet the security of the world on the hope that Iran will change for the better. We don’t have to gamble with our future and with our children’s future.

We can insist that restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program not be lifted for as long as Iran continues its aggression in the region and in the world.

Before lifting those restrictions, the world should demand that Iran do three things. First, stop its aggression against its neighbors in the Middle East. Second…

Second, stop supporting terrorism around the world.

And third, stop threatening to annihilate my country, Israel, the one and only Jewish state.

Thank you.

If the world powers are not prepared to insist that Iran change its behavior before a deal is signed, at the very least they should insist that Iran change its behavior before a deal expires.

If Iran changes its behavior, the restrictions would be lifted. If Iran doesn’t change its behavior, the restrictions should not be lifted.

If Iran wants to be treated like a normal country, let it act like a normal country.

My friends, what about the argument that there’s no alternative to this deal, that Iran’s nuclear know-how cannot be erased, that its nuclear program is so advanced that the best we can do is delay the inevitable, which is essentially what the proposed deal seeks to do?

Well, nuclear know-how without nuclear infrastructure doesn’t get you very much. A racecar driver without a car can’t drive. A pilot without a plan can’t fly. Without thousands of centrifuges, tons of enriched uranium or heavy water facilities, Iran can’t make nuclear weapons.

Iran’s nuclear program can be rolled back well-beyond the current proposal by insisting on a better deal and keeping up the pressure on a very vulnerable regime, especially given the recent collapse in the price of oil.

Now, if Iran threatens to walk away from the table — and this often happens in a Persian bazaar — call their bluff. They’ll be back, because they need the deal a lot more than you do.

And by maintaining the pressure on Iran and on those who do business with Iran, you have the power to make them need it even more.

My friends, for over a year, we’ve been told that no deal is better than a bad deal. Well, this is a bad deal. It’s a very bad deal. We’re better off without it.

Now we’re being told that the only alternative to this bad deal is war. That’s just not true.

The alternative to this bad deal is a much better deal.

A better deal that doesn’t leave Iran with a vast nuclear infrastructure and such a short break-out time. A better deal that keeps the restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program in place until Iran’s aggression ends.

A better deal that won’t give Iran an easy path to the bomb. A better deal that Israel and its neighbors may not like, but with which we could live, literally. And no country…

… no country has a greater stake — no country has a greater stake than Israel in a good deal that peacefully removes this threat.

Ladies and gentlemen, history has placed us at a fateful crossroads. We must now choose between two paths. One path leads to a bad deal that will at best curtail Iran’s nuclear ambitions for a while, but it will inexorably lead to a nuclear-armed Iran whose unbridled aggression will inevitably lead to war.

The second path, however difficult, could lead to a much better deal, that would prevent a nuclear-armed Iran, a nuclearized Middle East and the horrific consequences of both to all of humanity.

You don’t have to read Robert Frost to know. You have to live life to know that the difficult path is usually the one less traveled, but it will make all the difference for the future of my country, the security of the Middle East and the peace of the world, the peace, we all desire.

My friend, standing up to Iran is not easy. Standing up to dark and murderous regimes never is. With us today is Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel.

Elie, your life and work inspires to give meaning to the words, “never again.”

And I wish I could promise you, Elie, that the lessons of history have been learned. I can only urge the leaders of the world not to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Not to sacrifice the future for the present; not to ignore aggression in the hopes of gaining an illusory peace.

But I can guarantee you this, the days when the Jewish people remained passive in the face of genocidal enemies, those days are over.

We are no longer scattered among the nations, powerless to defend ourselves. We restored our sovereignty in our ancient home. And the soldiers who defend our home have boundless courage. For the first time in 100 generations, we, the Jewish people, can defend ourselves.

This is why — this is why, as a prime minister of Israel, I can promise you one more thing: Even if Israel has to stand alone, Israel will stand.

But I know that Israel does not stand alone. I know that America stands with Israel.

I know that you stand with Israel.

You stand with Israel, because you know that the story of Israel is not only the story of the Jewish people but of the human spirit that refuses again and again to succumb to history’s horrors.

Facing me right up there in the gallery, overlooking all of us in this (inaudible) chamber is the image of Moses. Moses led our people from slavery to the gates of the Promised Land.

And before the people of Israel entered the land of Israel, Moses gave us a message that has steeled our resolve for thousands of years. I leave you with his message today, (SPEAKING IN HEBREW), “Be strong and resolute, neither fear nor dread them.”

My friends, may Israel and America always stand together, strong and resolute. May we neither fear nor dread the challenges ahead. May we face the future with confidence, strength and hope.

May God bless the state of Israel and may God bless the United States of America.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu pulled out a map at his address to AIPAC Monday to show how the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorist network is threatening the world.

The display gives a hint of what may be the thread of the Prime Minister’s speech in Congress today – that Iran cannot be trusted with any nuclear program because it funds a worldwide terrorist network.

The map was not as cute as Netanyahu’s diagram at his United Nations speech three years ago, when he showed a red line with a cartoon bomb to illustrate Israel’s limits of tolerance to threats to be wiped off the map.

The map showed lines reaching from Iran to the point of terrorist attacks in five continents.

For some reason, he left out Argentine, the site of the Hezbollah bombing in 1994 of the AIMA center, but the map included Peru, the United States, India, Thailand, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria, Turkey, Egypt, Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria, France, Germany and, of course, Israel.

Tickets for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s speech n Congress today would be selling on the black market for hundreds if not thousands of dollars if Congressmen could sell their allotment of one ticket to friends and constituents.

“If I had 100 tickets, I’d be the most popular guy in town,” Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, told The New York Times.

The ear-piercing crescendo from the Obama administration and anti-Netanyahu bleachers in Israel has had a “Purim” effect by achieving results exactly opposite from their intentions.

Netanyahu stood his ground against demands from his political and media opponents in Israel to cancel the speech, which now has become talk of Washington, if not the entire United States.

“They have made it the most talked about thing in Washington, and I think it blew up in their face,” said Sen. Graham to the Times. “Everything he says, people want to hear, and people want to be in that room to listen, they want to be in person. It’s become a historic speech.”

The tickets are hotter than fresh latkes,” said Democratic Sen. Charles E. Schumer, who perhaps should have used the more timely analogy of “Hamantashen.”

“If Taylor Swift and Katy Perry did a joint concert at Madison Square Garden wearing white-and-gold and black-and-blue dresses, accompanied by dancing sharks and llamas, that’s the only way you’d have a tougher ticket,” Michael Steel, a spokesman for Boehner, told the newspaper.

That may be one of the reasons Obama is so angry over Netanyahu’s appearance.

The Jewish Press reported here yesterday that Americans have a highly favorable view of Netanyahu, even more than Obama.

The New York Times quoted New York Congressman Lee Zeldin as saying, “No one asked to be my guest” at the president’s State of the Union address.”

Approximately 30 Democrats are expressing their loyalty to Obama by planning to boycott the speech.

Any deal that President Barack Obama and the rest of the P5+1 make with Iran will be a bad deal because the regime in Tehran cannot be trusted to keep its end of the bargain.

That is a lesson that the West still has not learned from decades of fruitless efforts to create a “New Middle East,” in the words of then-President Bill Clinton.

Boy, he sure did create a new Middle East, and it’s one helluva mess.

He got plenty of help from the bleeding heart liberal establishment that includes major media conglomerates in Israel and elsewhere, the Labor party administrations under Rabin and Peres, and their corporate sponsors in Israel and abroad that count their money while appeasing a menace instead of challenging the axis of evil that it feeds to become a Frankenstein.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the previous president of the Islamic Republic also known as Iran, once said that President Barack Obama does not understand Iran because they do not speak the same language. He didn’t mean Farsi or English. He meant the culture.

American foreign policy for decades has been guided by State Dept. experts who can’t see past Foggy Bottom.

The Palestinian Authority has proven that any agreement is only the basis for another crisis until it can achieve is demands, which were written in stone by the so-called Saudi Peace Initiative of 2002. All Israel has to do is to surrender every inch of land that was restored to the country in the Six-Day War in 1967, including the Golan Heights and the Temple Mount, and open its borders for UNRWA’s Doomsday weapon it created in the guise of millions of Arab “refugees,” and there will be peace with the Arab world.

Since then, the Bush administration, and more emphatically the Obama administration, have whittled away at Israel’s existence by allowing Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas to repeatedly break agreements signed with Israel.

Iran, like Abbas, has a one-track mind. It wants to develop nuclear power for “peaceful purposes.”

But “peace” in Iran does not mean the same as in Jerusalem or Washington. “Peace” for fundamentalist Islamists is a world without Israel.

Therefore, Iran needs a nuclear wean to bring “peace” via an Islamic caliphate in the Middle East, where Israel is an obstacle.

But Obama does not because he does not understand the language of other cultures. He thinks that the world is one big American melting pot.

Obama has not learned his lessons from the colossal American foreign policy failures in the Palestinian Authority, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt, Russia and almost any crisis in a country where U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has visited.

He has not learned the lesson from the Kennedy-Johnson governments’ disastrous war in Vietnam.

That is why Netanyahu is going to speak in Congress today.

The problem is not whether or not Iran promises to stop making centrifuges. The problem is not that Iran may or may not promise to allow inspections of its nuclear facilities.

Israel’s problem, and it also is America’s problem, is not that Iran will agree to anything under the sun and will continue to use secret underground installations, or employ Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, to continue to develop nuclear capability.

Former Israeli diplomat Alon Pinkas was interviewed at length in Jerusalem and had plenty to say about the prime minister’s presence in the U.S.

Even the CNN correspondent conducting the live interview on air observed, “pretty harsh criticism coming from the former Israeli diplomat.”

The leftist diplomat served from 2000 to 2004 as Israel’s Consul General in New York City and as a political adviser to former prime minister and president Shimon Peres. He was also retained by the the far-left American Jewish organization, “J Street” as a speaker on tour in the United States in 2011.

“Despite his denial, his ‘holier than thou’ attitude, he is injecting Israel” into the partisan debate in the United States, Pinkas charged in Monday’s interview with CNN from Jerusalem.

Claiming that Netanyahu had “six years” to make his point on the Iranian nuclear threat, Pinkas said the prime minster “failed miserably” to get the job done. Now, he said, “he is injecting Israel into the American political arena… He loves doing that.”

Pinkas did say that he “genuinely believes” Netanyahu is deeply concerned about Israel’s survival in the face of Iran’s threat to annihilate the Jewish State. Among other criticisms, the former diplomat said he doubts the prime minister’s effectiveness.

“One of the problems with his approach to Iran is that he says what won’t work and why not, but he never came out with what will work,” Pinkas went on.

“He did not deliver his thoughts in a coherent manner to the president.”

Moreover, he said, Netanyahu could have made his points “at any time.” Why now? he asked.

“The timing is just wrong,” he said, adding that he believes the prime minister was looking to boost his ratings at home.

“The weird timing and concoction of this invitation has to do with elections…he could have made that speech any time…I think Mr. Netanyahu is aligning himself with the Republican party, that he is doing his buddy buddies a big favor ahead of the 2016 presidential elections.”

But Prime Minister Netanyahu said clearly in his speech to AIPAC that he regretted any misunderstanding about the intentions behind his desire to address the Congress. Netanyahu said he has “a moral obligation” to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon – and this speech is part of that effort.

Former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Dore Gold told CNN on Monday that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is intent on getting his message across about the danger facing Israel from Iran.

Basically, it’s the nuclear threat – not the Israeli elections or partisan issues or friction with America – that Netanyahu has come to the United States to talk about, media rumors and extraneous “other” comments notwithstanding.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power told participants at the packed AIPAC convention Monday the U.S. “will not let Iran have a nuclear weapon, period.”

But it’s really not that simple, as Gold pointed out to CNN. To date, no nation has had any real control over Iranian activities, as has been patently obvious to the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency, as reflected in its annual reports, regardless of international inspections and agreements and understandings signed or not signed.

Israel, perhaps more than any other nation, is exquisitely aware of this, since it is Israel’s existence Iran has threatened to snuff out.

“When the prime minister speaks to Congress tomorrow, his speech will have substance no one has heard before,” Gold said, “and he will put it on the table. The political systems in both countries will discuss it. In democracies, that is not odd.”

As for the current difficulties between the United States and Israel, Gold appeared unruffled.

“Differences with allies is not new,” he said. “It happens between the U.S. and Britain… and now with Israel and the U.S.”

Despite the tensions caused by the prime minister’s decision to go ahead with his speech to Congress on Tuesday, said Gold, “We have to do it.

“Look for substance. Don’t look for politics. The substance is there.”